Circumcision: male, female, and perceptions
One thing that I tend to find rather inconsistent is the way that male and female circumcision get presented in the media. Examples:
- On the one hand, the idea that male circumcision might be banned was enough to get the German chancellor to suggest that the country was becoming a laughing stock whereas two doctors recorded as being willing to perform female circumcisions in the UK prompted a bunch of horrified articles like this one
- Search Wikipedia for "male circumcision" and get redirected to circumcision. Search Wikipedia for "female circumcision" and get redirected to female genital mutilation.
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide: in part an argument to ban female circumcision; in part an argument to circumcise all men in Africa.
- The World Health Organization's campaign to circumcise African men versus its comment that "FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women."
The argument for one and against the other seems to consist largely of the following two parts:
Positive health benefits from one, none for the other: There is some evidence that male circumcision reduces HIV transmission, although the reliability of those sorts of studies is rather questionable. The results seen in the studies (often done in a dubious fashion) don't seem to be reflected amongst the larger population on which circumcision has or hasn't been performed. As well, as that second article notes, condoms seems to be much more successful at reducing HIV transmission and, if circumcision reduces the usage of condoms, infection rates might actually increase as a result. Another problem with this particular argument is that, as this article notes:
There is in fact evidence that female circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection in women (Stallings and Karugendo 2005), but given Western cultural preferences it is unlikely that there will ever be clinical trials to test and con?rm the possibility.
Male circumcision is more or less harmless, female circumcision is basically always horrendous: Male circumcision is far more drastic than the most benign forms of female genital mutilation described by the WHO - if you need to permit male circumcision as the German Chancellor argued to avoid becoming a laughingstock, it would seem consistent to permit at least the most benign forms of female circumcisions given that both male and female circumcision are typically done with some level of religious motivation. Male circumcision isn't exactly harmless either. In the US for example, the fatality rate for infant circumcision (i.e. not including other complications) is roughly 1 in 10000, accounting for about 1.3% of male baby deaths. As the study argues:
We hear very little in the media about circumcision-related deaths compared with
other causes. For instance, compare the 117 annual deaths from circumcision with those
from other causes for male infants: suffocation (44), mother’s use of addictive drugs
(27), HIV/AIDS (19), homicide (17), automobile accidents (8), drowning (2), and falls
(1) (CDC, 2004). Sudden infant-death syndrome (SIDS) killed 1,216 boys under the age
of one year in 2004; of those, 115 were under the age of 1 month (CDC), which is the
same risk as from circumcision. Approximately 36 teen-aged boys are killed in schoolyard
shootings each year (Donohue, Schiraldi, & Ziedenberg, 1998). But there is more
publicity for the SIDS deaths and shootings than for the circumcision-related deaths.
You'll find in South Africa alone, e.g. 39 deaths in just one month from adolescent males being circumcised. As the South African story notes, unhygienic tools are often used to perform the procedure but I suspect that given the death rate for US circumcisions you'd still see quite a few deaths resulting from the WHO's plans even with research being conducted into less risky ways to perform circumcisions. I'd guess 10000 or more deaths likely to result in addition to who knows what else - complications rates in Africa seem to be about 35% for traditional circumcisions and 18% for clinical circumcisions.
Half the Sky's argument against female circumcision due to the risk of death or injury while simultaneously campaigning for male circumcision due to health benefits seems inconsistent. There is some research out there to suggest that similar benefits may result from female circumcision as from male circumcision - although, as the article I mentioned above observes, it's unlikely that additional research in that area will be funded. Similarly, both male and female circumcisions result in death or injury to some extent. Implement the plan to circumcise all African men and I'd guess you'd likely see it resulting in a few thousand deaths that otherwise wouldn't have occurred.
My conclusion: ban both or ban neither. The practices seem to generally be done with similar motivation, have similar potential health benefits, and similarly have some significant risk of death or injury.